The Washington Post went a bit overboard with its lead article reporting on the second quarter GDP data. The article begins:
“After suffering the sharpest contraction since the recession ended, the U.S. economy rebounded this spring, providing fresh evidence that the recovery is finally turning a corner.
“Government data released Wednesday shows the economy expanded at an annual rate of 4 percent during the second quarter. Consumers pulled out their wallets, businesses restocked their inventories and even the long-moribund housing market perked up.
“The strong report dovetails with recent improvements in the job market. The Labor Department is expected to announce Friday that more than 200,000 net new jobs were created in July, marking the sixth straight month it has hit that benchmark.”
Actually the 4.0 growth figure reported for the second quarter implies the economy is on a very slow growth path when averaged in with the -2.1 growth in the first quarter. Taken together, the economy grew at less than a 1.0 percent annual rate in the first half of 2014. That is hardly cause for celebration.
And it is important to understand that the strong growth in the second quarter was directly related to the weak growth in the first quarter. Inventory growth was very weak in the first quarter, subtracting 1.16 percentage points from the quarter’s growth. This meant that the return to a more normal pace of inventory accumulation in the second quarter was a strong boost to growth, adding 1.66 percentage points. Final sales grew at just a 2.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter.
Even that rate was likely inflated to some extent by the weakness from the first quarter. In particular, a sharp jump in car sales added 0.42 percentage points to growth for the quarter. That will not be repeated in future quarters.
The report, taken together with the first quarter numbers, implies an underlying rate of growth close to 2.0 percent, the same as the rate for 2011-2013. This pace is at best keeping even with the economy’s potential growth rate, meaning that it is making up none of the ground lost during the recession. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, the economy is still operating at a level of output that is almost $800 billion (@4.5 percent) less than potential GDP. It will not close this gap unless it grows more rapidly than its potential.
The comment about job growth being in line with GDP growth seems misplaced given that the economy added 190,000 jobs a month in the first quarter when the data showed the economy shrinking by 2.1 percent. The pace of job growth has been quite extraordinary given the weakness of the economy.
The Washington Post went a bit overboard with its lead article reporting on the second quarter GDP data. The article begins:
“After suffering the sharpest contraction since the recession ended, the U.S. economy rebounded this spring, providing fresh evidence that the recovery is finally turning a corner.
“Government data released Wednesday shows the economy expanded at an annual rate of 4 percent during the second quarter. Consumers pulled out their wallets, businesses restocked their inventories and even the long-moribund housing market perked up.
“The strong report dovetails with recent improvements in the job market. The Labor Department is expected to announce Friday that more than 200,000 net new jobs were created in July, marking the sixth straight month it has hit that benchmark.”
Actually the 4.0 growth figure reported for the second quarter implies the economy is on a very slow growth path when averaged in with the -2.1 growth in the first quarter. Taken together, the economy grew at less than a 1.0 percent annual rate in the first half of 2014. That is hardly cause for celebration.
And it is important to understand that the strong growth in the second quarter was directly related to the weak growth in the first quarter. Inventory growth was very weak in the first quarter, subtracting 1.16 percentage points from the quarter’s growth. This meant that the return to a more normal pace of inventory accumulation in the second quarter was a strong boost to growth, adding 1.66 percentage points. Final sales grew at just a 2.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter.
Even that rate was likely inflated to some extent by the weakness from the first quarter. In particular, a sharp jump in car sales added 0.42 percentage points to growth for the quarter. That will not be repeated in future quarters.
The report, taken together with the first quarter numbers, implies an underlying rate of growth close to 2.0 percent, the same as the rate for 2011-2013. This pace is at best keeping even with the economy’s potential growth rate, meaning that it is making up none of the ground lost during the recession. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, the economy is still operating at a level of output that is almost $800 billion (@4.5 percent) less than potential GDP. It will not close this gap unless it grows more rapidly than its potential.
The comment about job growth being in line with GDP growth seems misplaced given that the economy added 190,000 jobs a month in the first quarter when the data showed the economy shrinking by 2.1 percent. The pace of job growth has been quite extraordinary given the weakness of the economy.
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Yes, what else is new? The immediate topic is Gene Steuerle’s new book, Dead Men Ruling (reviewed here). The basic story, taken from the book, is that commitments made in the past, specifically Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt, are taking up an ever larger share of the budget. This means that in the decades ahead people will have little say in how their tax dollars are spent, since they have already been committed by prior generations of “dead men.”
There are several problems with this story. First, categories of spending are not the only way in which past generations obligate future generations. Military actions and tough on crime laws also impose large burdens on future taxpayers. For example, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq it not only committed itself to many decades of payments to veterans, included many who were wounded or disabled, but it also implied future commitments to the region. While the country may be able to back out of these commitments, politicians will often be reluctant to do so.
In the same vein, tough on crime measures, such as three strikes laws, can mean that we will have to support a large prison population for decades into the future. (It can also mean that people spend their life in jail for petty offenses.) There is little obvious basis for highlighting the spending committed by social programs while ignoring spending committed by military actions and harsh criminal penalties.
A second problem with the logic here is it implicitly assumes that the revenue is available independent of the spending. This is almost certainly not true, especially in the case of Social Security. Under the law, Social Security taxes can only be used for Social Security spending. There is also reason to believe that people view Social Security taxes as different from other taxes. The National Academy for Social Insurance recently did a poll which found that a majority of people would be willing to pay higher taxes if it was necessary to avoid a benefit cut. The fact that taxes and spending are linked both in law and the public’s mind means it is misleading to include Social Security revenue in the denominator of money available to spend. It isn’t. (This would be explicit if we privatized Social Security.) This means that the amount of taxes that are actually up for grabs is much less than Lane-Steuerle say, and the portion committed by dead men for social insurance is considerably less.
This brings us to the other side of the ledger, Medicare and Medicaid. We spend more than twice as much per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries. This should not be something we take for granted for all future time. After all, our political leaders are not that much more corrupt and incompetent than those in other countries.
If we paid the same amount for health care as people in other countries it would free up large amounts of revenue. However this would mean going after our doctors, the drug companies, and the medical equipment manufacturers, all of whom pocket close to twice as much as their counterparts in Europe and Canada. Of course this means going after powerful interest groups. That is not a popular position in Washington and certainly not at the Washington Post. (It should be noted that the Post gets large amounts of advertising revenue from drug companies.)
So the real question raised here is whether we look to cut benefits for seniors or whether we look to cut waste from the health care system. We know where Charles Lane and Post stand.
Addendum: I should also mention that patent monopolies also should be listed among the commitments made by dead men. In effect, a patent monopoly is a privately collected tax, where we allow patent holders to charge prices far above the free market price, but threatening competition with jail. Anyone looking at ways in which the government commits the resources of future generations should certainly count these obligations. For prescription drugs alone the excess price is around 2 percent of GDP (10 percent of the federal budget).
Yes, what else is new? The immediate topic is Gene Steuerle’s new book, Dead Men Ruling (reviewed here). The basic story, taken from the book, is that commitments made in the past, specifically Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt, are taking up an ever larger share of the budget. This means that in the decades ahead people will have little say in how their tax dollars are spent, since they have already been committed by prior generations of “dead men.”
There are several problems with this story. First, categories of spending are not the only way in which past generations obligate future generations. Military actions and tough on crime laws also impose large burdens on future taxpayers. For example, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq it not only committed itself to many decades of payments to veterans, included many who were wounded or disabled, but it also implied future commitments to the region. While the country may be able to back out of these commitments, politicians will often be reluctant to do so.
In the same vein, tough on crime measures, such as three strikes laws, can mean that we will have to support a large prison population for decades into the future. (It can also mean that people spend their life in jail for petty offenses.) There is little obvious basis for highlighting the spending committed by social programs while ignoring spending committed by military actions and harsh criminal penalties.
A second problem with the logic here is it implicitly assumes that the revenue is available independent of the spending. This is almost certainly not true, especially in the case of Social Security. Under the law, Social Security taxes can only be used for Social Security spending. There is also reason to believe that people view Social Security taxes as different from other taxes. The National Academy for Social Insurance recently did a poll which found that a majority of people would be willing to pay higher taxes if it was necessary to avoid a benefit cut. The fact that taxes and spending are linked both in law and the public’s mind means it is misleading to include Social Security revenue in the denominator of money available to spend. It isn’t. (This would be explicit if we privatized Social Security.) This means that the amount of taxes that are actually up for grabs is much less than Lane-Steuerle say, and the portion committed by dead men for social insurance is considerably less.
This brings us to the other side of the ledger, Medicare and Medicaid. We spend more than twice as much per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries. This should not be something we take for granted for all future time. After all, our political leaders are not that much more corrupt and incompetent than those in other countries.
If we paid the same amount for health care as people in other countries it would free up large amounts of revenue. However this would mean going after our doctors, the drug companies, and the medical equipment manufacturers, all of whom pocket close to twice as much as their counterparts in Europe and Canada. Of course this means going after powerful interest groups. That is not a popular position in Washington and certainly not at the Washington Post. (It should be noted that the Post gets large amounts of advertising revenue from drug companies.)
So the real question raised here is whether we look to cut benefits for seniors or whether we look to cut waste from the health care system. We know where Charles Lane and Post stand.
Addendum: I should also mention that patent monopolies also should be listed among the commitments made by dead men. In effect, a patent monopoly is a privately collected tax, where we allow patent holders to charge prices far above the free market price, but threatening competition with jail. Anyone looking at ways in which the government commits the resources of future generations should certainly count these obligations. For prescription drugs alone the excess price is around 2 percent of GDP (10 percent of the federal budget).
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The release of new data from the Employment Cost Index (ECI) has the inflation hawks really excited. It showed that compensation rose by 0.7 percent in the months from March to June. This is a sharp uptick from the 0.3 percent rate in the months from December to March. This could be just what is needed to force the Fed to raise interest rates to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. That’s pretty exciting stuff.
Before we start designating people to give up their jobs in the war against inflation, it’s worth looking at the data a bit more closely. The 0.3 percent ECI growth reported for the winter months was actually unusually low. It had been rising at a 0.5 percent quarterly rate (2.0 percent annual rate) for the last four years. Fans of arithmetic can average together the 0.3 percent measure from the first quarter with the 0.7 percent measure from the second quarter and get (drum roll, please) ……. 0.5 percent.
In other words, the 0.7 percent rise in the ECI kept exactly on the growth track we have been for the last four years. It is not evidence of an uptick in the rate of wage growth (which would be good news).
Employment Cost Index
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Addendum:
Since there are people who see the rise in the second quarter ECI as a serious inflation threat, a few more data points may be helpful. The rise in the ECI for state and local employees was unchanged at 0.5 percent in both the first and second quarters. On the private side, the wage index went from a rise of 0.2 percent in the first quarter to 0.8 percent in the second quarter. The benefits index rose 0.3 percent in the first quarter, compared with 1.1 percent in the second quarter.
This leaves us with two possible explanations. The first is that the rate of increase in wages and benefits in the private sector slowed sharply in the first quarter and then accelerated even more sharply in the second quarter. Alternatively, the ECI under-reported wage and benefit growth in the first quarter. This means that if the trend growth was unchanged, we would find the sharp uptick in wage and benefit growth reported in the second quarter data.
When we look at a finer cut of the data it certainly seems consistent with the second story. For example, the increase in compensation for management, business, and financial occupations was 0.0 percent in the first quarter. It was 1.2 percent in the 2nd quarter. The increase in compensation for health care and social assistance industries was -0.3 percent in the first quarter. It was 0.6 percent in the second quarter. Does anyone believe that the world really looks like this?
The release of new data from the Employment Cost Index (ECI) has the inflation hawks really excited. It showed that compensation rose by 0.7 percent in the months from March to June. This is a sharp uptick from the 0.3 percent rate in the months from December to March. This could be just what is needed to force the Fed to raise interest rates to slow the economy and keep people from getting jobs. That’s pretty exciting stuff.
Before we start designating people to give up their jobs in the war against inflation, it’s worth looking at the data a bit more closely. The 0.3 percent ECI growth reported for the winter months was actually unusually low. It had been rising at a 0.5 percent quarterly rate (2.0 percent annual rate) for the last four years. Fans of arithmetic can average together the 0.3 percent measure from the first quarter with the 0.7 percent measure from the second quarter and get (drum roll, please) ……. 0.5 percent.
In other words, the 0.7 percent rise in the ECI kept exactly on the growth track we have been for the last four years. It is not evidence of an uptick in the rate of wage growth (which would be good news).
Employment Cost Index
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Addendum:
Since there are people who see the rise in the second quarter ECI as a serious inflation threat, a few more data points may be helpful. The rise in the ECI for state and local employees was unchanged at 0.5 percent in both the first and second quarters. On the private side, the wage index went from a rise of 0.2 percent in the first quarter to 0.8 percent in the second quarter. The benefits index rose 0.3 percent in the first quarter, compared with 1.1 percent in the second quarter.
This leaves us with two possible explanations. The first is that the rate of increase in wages and benefits in the private sector slowed sharply in the first quarter and then accelerated even more sharply in the second quarter. Alternatively, the ECI under-reported wage and benefit growth in the first quarter. This means that if the trend growth was unchanged, we would find the sharp uptick in wage and benefit growth reported in the second quarter data.
When we look at a finer cut of the data it certainly seems consistent with the second story. For example, the increase in compensation for management, business, and financial occupations was 0.0 percent in the first quarter. It was 1.2 percent in the 2nd quarter. The increase in compensation for health care and social assistance industries was -0.3 percent in the first quarter. It was 0.6 percent in the second quarter. Does anyone believe that the world really looks like this?
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A NYT article on the possibility of a default by Argentina seriously misrepresented the issues involved and the origins of the term “vulture” in reference to the funds involved in a lawsuit against Argentina. The article implies that the funds had been bondholders at the time of Argentina’s default in 2001 who refused to accept the terms that were offered to bondholders following the default:
“Through two restructurings, the government eventually struck a deal with a majority of its bond investors, who are now called exchange bondholders because they exchanged their bonds for ones that were worth as little as a fourth of the value of the original securities. The hedge funds, known as the holdouts, declined to participate in the restructurings. Instead, they are seeking $1.5 billion in repayment, including interest.”
In fact, these funds bought up Argentine debt years after the default, paying a small fraction of its face value. Their intention was to use their political connections to get a favorable ruling from the courts, with the hope of being able to extract something close to the face value of the defaulted bonds from Argentina’s government. This is exactly what “vulture funds” do. The term did not originate with Argentina, it dates back decades.
A NYT article on the possibility of a default by Argentina seriously misrepresented the issues involved and the origins of the term “vulture” in reference to the funds involved in a lawsuit against Argentina. The article implies that the funds had been bondholders at the time of Argentina’s default in 2001 who refused to accept the terms that were offered to bondholders following the default:
“Through two restructurings, the government eventually struck a deal with a majority of its bond investors, who are now called exchange bondholders because they exchanged their bonds for ones that were worth as little as a fourth of the value of the original securities. The hedge funds, known as the holdouts, declined to participate in the restructurings. Instead, they are seeking $1.5 billion in repayment, including interest.”
In fact, these funds bought up Argentine debt years after the default, paying a small fraction of its face value. Their intention was to use their political connections to get a favorable ruling from the courts, with the hope of being able to extract something close to the face value of the defaulted bonds from Argentina’s government. This is exactly what “vulture funds” do. The term did not originate with Argentina, it dates back decades.
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It is great fun watching the establishment get so upset over the possibility that Boeings’ the Export-Import Bank may not be reauthorized to issue more loans. Just to remind everyone, the Export-Import Bank issues the overwhelming majority of its loans and guarantees to benefit a small number of huge corporations. It is a straightforward subsidy to these companies, giving them loans at below market interest rates. (Yes, they are almost all paid back. This means that our financial wizards have discovered arbitrage — the government borrows at a lower rate than anyone else so it can show a profit any time it lends to anyone else by splitting the difference in borrowing costs.)
Anyhow, today’s fun is a column in the NYT (major media outlets have an open door policy to anyone who wants to argue to preserve the subsidies) by William Brock, a former senator and trade representative under President Reagan. Brock tackles head on the argument made by folks like me that only a small portion of our exports are subsidized by the bank:
“Opponents of the bank say that it supports just 2 percent of all exports. Still, 2 percent amounts to $37.4 billion of American products made by American workers in American plants. That translates into tens of thousands of jobs from every state in the country.”
Wow, that’s pretty compelling. But wait, suppose we ended the subsidies to Boeing. Would it never sell another plane abroad?
Fans of economics everywhere know that the end of the Ex-IM subsidies simply means that it would stand to make less money on each plane. For the most part this would be a story of lower profits, but there would be some reduction in exports, probably in the range of 10 to 30 percent of the amount being subsidized. That translates into $3.7 to $11.2 billion in exports that we would lose without the Ex-Im Bank.
Is that a big deal? We can compare this to another export number that has been in the news recently. A new study showed that because of the sanctions against Iran, the United States has lost $175.4 billion in exports since 1995, with the estimated losses coming to $15 billion in 2012, the latest year covered by the study. So the jobs at stake with the Ex-Im Bank are about 75 percent of the number that could be gained if we ended the sanctions against Iran. In other words, if we think the ending of loans from the EX-Im Bank would be a hit to the economy, then we must think the sanctions to Iran are an even bigger hit.
Of course as a practical matter, if we really wanted to boost exports we would go the free market route and push down the value of the dollar against other currencies. That is how economies with a trade deficit, like the United States, are supposed to adjust towards balanced trade in a system of floating exchange rates. However we don’t see this adjustment because other governments buy up large amounts of dollars in order to prop up its value and preserve their export markets in the United States.
We could negotiate for a lower valued dollar, but that would hurt the profits of companies like Walmart that have arranged low cost supply chains in the developing world. It would also hurt major manufacturers like Boeing and GE who now do much of their manufacturing overseas.
So, we don’t read much in the papers about reducing the value of the dollar. Instead we get an endless drumbeat of news stories and columns about the urgency of preserving the Ex-Im Bank. The public may lack the political power to stop the re-authorization, but we can at least enjoy the show.
Note: It is of course net exports that add jobs, not just exports. (We don’t create jobs if we import a car from Mexico and export it to Canada.) In both the case of the Ex-Im Bank and the Iran sanctions there also is a question of imports, which is going unaddressed.
It is great fun watching the establishment get so upset over the possibility that Boeings’ the Export-Import Bank may not be reauthorized to issue more loans. Just to remind everyone, the Export-Import Bank issues the overwhelming majority of its loans and guarantees to benefit a small number of huge corporations. It is a straightforward subsidy to these companies, giving them loans at below market interest rates. (Yes, they are almost all paid back. This means that our financial wizards have discovered arbitrage — the government borrows at a lower rate than anyone else so it can show a profit any time it lends to anyone else by splitting the difference in borrowing costs.)
Anyhow, today’s fun is a column in the NYT (major media outlets have an open door policy to anyone who wants to argue to preserve the subsidies) by William Brock, a former senator and trade representative under President Reagan. Brock tackles head on the argument made by folks like me that only a small portion of our exports are subsidized by the bank:
“Opponents of the bank say that it supports just 2 percent of all exports. Still, 2 percent amounts to $37.4 billion of American products made by American workers in American plants. That translates into tens of thousands of jobs from every state in the country.”
Wow, that’s pretty compelling. But wait, suppose we ended the subsidies to Boeing. Would it never sell another plane abroad?
Fans of economics everywhere know that the end of the Ex-IM subsidies simply means that it would stand to make less money on each plane. For the most part this would be a story of lower profits, but there would be some reduction in exports, probably in the range of 10 to 30 percent of the amount being subsidized. That translates into $3.7 to $11.2 billion in exports that we would lose without the Ex-Im Bank.
Is that a big deal? We can compare this to another export number that has been in the news recently. A new study showed that because of the sanctions against Iran, the United States has lost $175.4 billion in exports since 1995, with the estimated losses coming to $15 billion in 2012, the latest year covered by the study. So the jobs at stake with the Ex-Im Bank are about 75 percent of the number that could be gained if we ended the sanctions against Iran. In other words, if we think the ending of loans from the EX-Im Bank would be a hit to the economy, then we must think the sanctions to Iran are an even bigger hit.
Of course as a practical matter, if we really wanted to boost exports we would go the free market route and push down the value of the dollar against other currencies. That is how economies with a trade deficit, like the United States, are supposed to adjust towards balanced trade in a system of floating exchange rates. However we don’t see this adjustment because other governments buy up large amounts of dollars in order to prop up its value and preserve their export markets in the United States.
We could negotiate for a lower valued dollar, but that would hurt the profits of companies like Walmart that have arranged low cost supply chains in the developing world. It would also hurt major manufacturers like Boeing and GE who now do much of their manufacturing overseas.
So, we don’t read much in the papers about reducing the value of the dollar. Instead we get an endless drumbeat of news stories and columns about the urgency of preserving the Ex-Im Bank. The public may lack the political power to stop the re-authorization, but we can at least enjoy the show.
Note: It is of course net exports that add jobs, not just exports. (We don’t create jobs if we import a car from Mexico and export it to Canada.) In both the case of the Ex-Im Bank and the Iran sanctions there also is a question of imports, which is going unaddressed.
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The NYT had an article reporting on the possibility that China will use anti-monopoly laws and other regulations to limit Microsoft’s operations in the country. This raises an interesting issue. Presumably the Obama administration will step in to try to protect Microsoft’s interests. Since the United States cannot just dictate policy to China, if it wins concessions on the treatment of Microsoft then it presumably will make less progress in other areas like getting China to raise the value of its currency against the dollar.
If negotiating over Microsoft leads to the dollar having a higher value than would otherwise be the case, it would mean that we have a larger trade deficit. This raises the question of how many steel workers and auto workers will lose their jobs to protect Bill Gates’ profits?
The NYT had an article reporting on the possibility that China will use anti-monopoly laws and other regulations to limit Microsoft’s operations in the country. This raises an interesting issue. Presumably the Obama administration will step in to try to protect Microsoft’s interests. Since the United States cannot just dictate policy to China, if it wins concessions on the treatment of Microsoft then it presumably will make less progress in other areas like getting China to raise the value of its currency against the dollar.
If negotiating over Microsoft leads to the dollar having a higher value than would otherwise be the case, it would mean that we have a larger trade deficit. This raises the question of how many steel workers and auto workers will lose their jobs to protect Bill Gates’ profits?
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Morning Edition had a piece on the possibility that Argentina will again default on its debt. The risk follows the decision by the Supreme Court to refuse to review a New York district court judge’s ruling that Argentina had to pay a group of holdout bondholders 100 cents on the dollar and requiring U.S. banks to help enforce this ruling. As the piece explains, this is likely to lead to a second default since a provision in the agreement with the bondholders who had settled from the 2001 default required the government to treat all bondholders the same. This means that if the holdouts get 100 cents on the dollar then all bondholders would have to be paid 100 cents on the dollar.
There are a few points in this story that deserve clarification. The piece notes that Argentina refers to the holdout investors as “vultures.” This is not a term the country invented. The term “vulture fund” goes back decades. It refers to a fund that buys assets at a seriously depressed price in the hope of being able to use the legal system to increase their value. The funds that have brought the legal case in U.S. courts are pretty much the textbook definition of vulture funds.
It is also would have been worth noting that Thomas P. Griesa, the judge whose ruling has created the current impasse, seems not to understand the implications of his actions. Given the large range of judges across the country, it is not surprising that complex cases will occasionally be assigned to a judge who does not fully appreciate the issues involved. However the appeals process usually allows for mistaken rulings to be corrected by higher courts. That did not happen in this case.
Morning Edition had a piece on the possibility that Argentina will again default on its debt. The risk follows the decision by the Supreme Court to refuse to review a New York district court judge’s ruling that Argentina had to pay a group of holdout bondholders 100 cents on the dollar and requiring U.S. banks to help enforce this ruling. As the piece explains, this is likely to lead to a second default since a provision in the agreement with the bondholders who had settled from the 2001 default required the government to treat all bondholders the same. This means that if the holdouts get 100 cents on the dollar then all bondholders would have to be paid 100 cents on the dollar.
There are a few points in this story that deserve clarification. The piece notes that Argentina refers to the holdout investors as “vultures.” This is not a term the country invented. The term “vulture fund” goes back decades. It refers to a fund that buys assets at a seriously depressed price in the hope of being able to use the legal system to increase their value. The funds that have brought the legal case in U.S. courts are pretty much the textbook definition of vulture funds.
It is also would have been worth noting that Thomas P. Griesa, the judge whose ruling has created the current impasse, seems not to understand the implications of his actions. Given the large range of judges across the country, it is not surprising that complex cases will occasionally be assigned to a judge who does not fully appreciate the issues involved. However the appeals process usually allows for mistaken rulings to be corrected by higher courts. That did not happen in this case.
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A NYT article reported on a study from Russell Sage reporting that median household wealth was 36 percent lower in 2013 than 2003. While this is disturbing, an even more striking finding from the study is that median wealth is down by around 20 percent from 1984.
This is noteworthy because this cannot be explained as largely the result of the collapse of house prices that triggered the Great Recession. This indicates that we have gone thirty years, during which time output per worker has more than doubled, but real wealth has actually fallen for the typical family. It is also important to realize that the drop in wealth reported in the study understates the true drop since a typical household in 1984 would have been able to count on a defined benefit pension. This is not true at present, so the effective drop in wealth is even larger than reported by the study. (Defined benefit pensions are not included in its measure of wealth.)
A NYT article reported on a study from Russell Sage reporting that median household wealth was 36 percent lower in 2013 than 2003. While this is disturbing, an even more striking finding from the study is that median wealth is down by around 20 percent from 1984.
This is noteworthy because this cannot be explained as largely the result of the collapse of house prices that triggered the Great Recession. This indicates that we have gone thirty years, during which time output per worker has more than doubled, but real wealth has actually fallen for the typical family. It is also important to realize that the drop in wealth reported in the study understates the true drop since a typical household in 1984 would have been able to count on a defined benefit pension. This is not true at present, so the effective drop in wealth is even larger than reported by the study. (Defined benefit pensions are not included in its measure of wealth.)
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The Washington Post told readers that New Jersey’s public pension faces a shortfall of $40 billion. Just in case some readers aren’t familiar with the size of New Jersey’s economy over the next 30 years (the relevant period for pension planning), it will have a discounted state product of more than $12 trillion. This means that the shortfall is roughly equal to 0.3 percent of future GDP. This is considerably larger than the shortfall faced by most states.
The Washington Post told readers that New Jersey’s public pension faces a shortfall of $40 billion. Just in case some readers aren’t familiar with the size of New Jersey’s economy over the next 30 years (the relevant period for pension planning), it will have a discounted state product of more than $12 trillion. This means that the shortfall is roughly equal to 0.3 percent of future GDP. This is considerably larger than the shortfall faced by most states.
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It’s hard to know what else it could possibly mean, but the Washington Post dutifully reported to readers:
“The aging population is shrinking here, with the 2011 census showing a loss of about 1.5 million people since the 1980s. As the decline accelerates, by 2030 the government predicts a hole as big as 2.3 million workers in the German labor force.”
In a market economy, wages adjust to equilibrate supply and demand. If there are fewer workers in Germany it means that workers will leave less productive sectors, like retail trade, restaurants, and hotels, and instead move to sectors in which they can get a higher wage. Many of the firms in the less productive sectors will go out of business.
This sort of transition happens all the time. It is the reason that half of the U.S. population is not still working in agriculture. In the context of a market economy it is not clear what it can mean to have a hole in the labor force. This would just mean that low productivity jobs cease to exist. So what?
It’s hard to know what else it could possibly mean, but the Washington Post dutifully reported to readers:
“The aging population is shrinking here, with the 2011 census showing a loss of about 1.5 million people since the 1980s. As the decline accelerates, by 2030 the government predicts a hole as big as 2.3 million workers in the German labor force.”
In a market economy, wages adjust to equilibrate supply and demand. If there are fewer workers in Germany it means that workers will leave less productive sectors, like retail trade, restaurants, and hotels, and instead move to sectors in which they can get a higher wage. Many of the firms in the less productive sectors will go out of business.
This sort of transition happens all the time. It is the reason that half of the U.S. population is not still working in agriculture. In the context of a market economy it is not clear what it can mean to have a hole in the labor force. This would just mean that low productivity jobs cease to exist. So what?
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